Due to recent federal legislation as well as new educational institutional policies, pharmaceutical and medical device companies are banned from providing any significant financial assistance or incentive to the doctors or the medical staff in order to promote their products or services. Traditional marketing methods included the use of company employees to entertain, gift, or otherwise incentive medical personnel to listen to or to see presentations concerning the respective company's products or services. In response to the loss of this traditional method, the medical companies have taken to marketing their products directly to the public via commercial media, i.e. television, magazines, newspapers. The thrust of such marketing is to motivate the potential patient to ask their doctor about the product. Often, this is the first notification of such a product. It is no longer the direct relationship with the supplier for information, but it is the patient who is now the agent of information. This method often is confusing to the patient who may lack medical understanding and novel to the physician or staff who was not prepared educationally to respond to the patient's inquiry. The problem now is how to get this timely educational information to the medical profession. Continuing medical education is provided by the hospitals, universities, and medical societies, but these are monthly or less frequent.
This problem is further complicated by the doctor's and staff's available time being limited. Daily patient care activities minimize or eliminate daily education opportunity. There is little time available on a daily basis to learn about the new products or services of the pharmaceutical or medical device companies for the above reasons.
Furthermore, immediately prior to or during an actual operation or treatment, there may be a need to review these new products or services in order to treat the patient or to obtain the latest information about the actual operation or treatment.
Prior to an operation, surgeons and staff spend a significant amount of total time washing his/her hands and forearms, even multiple times each day. The period of time “scrubbing” is typically three to ten minutes at a surgical scrub sink. It is a time of isolation from any and all other activities. Therefore, this is an opportune time for short segments of video and or sound bites concerning relevant medical educational material. Surgical sinks are used in order to permit a surgeon to wash his/her hands prior to entering the surgical suite and subsequent placement of the sterile surgical gloves for surgery. Furthermore, the surgical sinks are located in or near the operating room and consequently may be difficult to hard wire. It is essential, in order to maintain the sterile conditions, that the surgeon's hands not touch any object which might be unsterile. Voice or physical mode for activation is possible for selection from the menu on the television monitor for the program of their choosing; by their specialty or their academic interest.
Technology continues to enter the operating room. Presently, surgery can be aided with 3-D vision. This was a technology that was originally developed by the military to help fighter pilots immerse themselves in air combat. The same technology is helping surgeons. Surgeons set a pair of sophisticated goggles over their head to view the surgery with the aid of cameras inserted into incisions into the patient as their surgical tools are inserted below the skin. The surgeons can obtain a real-time view of the effect of their surgery. However, this does not address the need of the surgeon for instantaneous training and guidance for unexpected problems.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,369,799 discloses a method and apparatus for controlling a computer screen adapted for use by individuals with limited or no manual dexterity.
Because of the closeness of the scrub sink to the OR room, there may be a need to avoid excess noise from or in consideration of other doctors and staff members.